


rewrite the stars

by kyrilu



Category: HIStory3: 那一天 | HIStory3: Make Our Days Count
Genre: Alternate Universe - Genre Twist, Fix-It of Sorts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21859369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: Xiang Hao Ting tells himself that he wants to become a physicist to reach the stars for Yu Xi Gu.
Relationships: Xiang Hao Ting/Yu Xi Gu
Comments: 26
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> not going to lie, this is a bit silly, but i was desperately hoping for this twist while watching the last episode.

Xiang Hao Ting tells himself that he wants to become a physicist to reach the stars for Yu Xi Gu.

But maybe he's still too much of a dreamer at heart. Maybe it's the _Doraemon_ episodes he watched as a child; maybe it's the _Back to the Future_ movies; maybe it's his foolish head that thinks that anything is possible as long as he tries his hardest, because that's his approach to everything. That's how he got into university and that's how he pursued the one and only love of his life. 

In his classes, he learns about time. Einstein's fourth dimension.

Time only moves forward. Yet the rates of time are relative, depending on the observer and their speed, and everyday, Xiang Hao Ting sees how he's aging, little by little; how his muscles become stronger every hike; how his mind is filled with more and more knowledge--

While his Yu Xi Gu is there, in the ground, to be covered by the flowers that Xiang Hao Ting leaves every week.

Some nights, he dreams of the star-filled sky. Some nights, he sees the swirling black of a wormhole -- the connection between two points in time -- the intersections of universes. 

He dreams of it - this abyss, this bridge - and stepping out from starlight into sunlight into Yu Xi Gu's arms. They are eighteen and happy and _forever_. They are young and ambitious and breathless from kisses.

Xiang Hao Ting doesn't become a physicist to study the universe. 

Xiang Hao Ting becomes a physicist to break its rules. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i thought i was done, but nope.

His professors tell him: _You can’t do that. You can’t seriously make time travel -- dimension travel -- your entire life’s work._

But there will be a part of him that will always be eighteen and scared, staring down the street with helplessness in his eyes.

He works until the equations and formulas are a jumble in his head. Surrounded by scientific journals, he sleeps, and he wakes with parched lips and dark circles underneath his eyes.

Lu Zhi Gang visits him, bearing boba tea, soup, and a sad smile. “I loved him, too. But, Hao Ting- _de,_ your family and your friends are worried about you.” 

“Don’t tell me he wouldn’t do the same,” Xiang Hao Ting says. “Thank you, _ge_ , but I have to keep working.”

“I know he was special,” Lu Zhi Gang murmurs. “But you’re still so young. There are places around the world you can travel. Friends to meet. New foods to try.”

“But what’s the point in that without him? We promised to climb mountains together. To study abroad. To cook different carrot recipes.”

Lu Zhi Gang sighs, and he sits down next to Xiang Hao Ting at the table. “Have you heard of the five stages of grief? First, denial. Second, anger. And the third is bargaining. A prayer sent to the gods, saying, to avoid this pain, I will do this. I will give up this thing; I will take on this burden.”

“And I am praying to the gods of physics,” Xiang Hao Ting says, with a wry smile. “Einstein, Rosen, Hawking, Thorne, and the rest. Zhi Gang- _ge_ , I want to turn back time for him. Not for me, but for him, to give him back the future that he lost.” 

Lu Zhi Gang reaches out and pulls Xiang Hao Ting into an embrace. He is strong and unwavering, and Xiang Hao Ting lets himself be held. “Almost every day at the store, I think of him. He was the hardest worker I’ve ever known, and even when he was tired, he would always be kind. He would pause to help the junior high kids who came in with homework. He would remember our regulars’ orders and ask them about their day.”

Lu Zhi Gang says, “You don’t need to do the impossible to bring him back to life. But you can carry him with you, his ambition and his sweetness, and let him live through you.” 

Gently, Xiang Hao Ting pushes Lu Zhi Gang away. “I understand. Go back home, Zhi Gang- _ge._ I appreciate the food.”

“All right,” Lu Zhi Gang says, with a dip of his head. “But remember, we’ll always be here. Me and Sun Bo Xiang.” 

The boba tea is sweet, and the soup is still warm. Xiang Hao Ting drinks and eats, then returns to work.

* * *

In another universe, Xiang Hao Ting wonders, would he and Yu Xi Gu study this together? Or would it not be relevant, and they would laugh at science fiction dramas and movies from a theoretical standpoint and not think of it at with a yearning determined ache.

This is the problem of the multiverse. It makes everything feel less real. Every place he goes, every action he takes, there is a whisper in his mind - _but Yu Xi Gu_ \- _but if things went differently - if time and space bent this way or that --_

Somewhere, in another life, Xiang Hao Ting and Yu Xi Gu are together, laughing. They wear rings on their fingers. They have never been touched by the shadow of grief.

* * *

He is twenty-five. He is twenty-nine. He is thirty. He is thirty-three. He travels forward in time at the normal rate, as Xiang Hao Ting lives and studies in America, his English mastered to near-perfection. Scientific journals are full of his papers on closed time-like curves, and he delivers presentations at conferences and classes.

Of course, there are paradoxes, both physical and philosophical.

“If a Chronology Protection Agent ever appeared at my front door,” he jokes to his students, “I would invite him in for coffee, interrogate him about the mechanics of time and dimension travel, and hopefully escape any mind-erasing technology he tries to aim at me.”

Sometimes, Xiang Hao Ting almost forgets. He talks for hours with colleagues on string theory. He visits the various boba tea stores and art galleries in the city. He explores America’s national parks. He has long video calls with his family and friends back in Taiwan.

This is the most dangerous thing, the forgetting. It doesn’t help that here in the city, it can be difficult to see the stars, light pollution drowning out _him, him, him._

* * *

“The thing is,” he tells Sun Bo Xiang, before leaving for America, “the thing is, I don’t even think I have to be with him. It would be enough if I jumped in front of the car for him. It would be enough if I ran to the store to get salt in his place, and I would be the one hit. It would be enough if I meddled, interfered, so our high school selves would never get together. He would never have been put in that position, and I would stay and work while he went off to his rightful place in university.”

Sun Bo Xiang looks at him. “Would you, really? To make it so you never know him and the happiness you had together? To give up your own life and future?”

“I would. I would make that choice every time.” 

“Don’t think so little of yourself,” Sun Bo Xiang says, frowning. “Hao Ting, don’t say things like that. This is nonsense--”

“The universe is very big,” Xiang Hao Ting says, with a crooked smile. “It expands every day. Right now, we’re little dots at a place in space and time. You just need to force gravity to warp in the right way.”

“Xiang Hao Ting, I’m right here.”

“And me, as well,” Lu Zhi Gang says, stepping from the kitchen. “I can’t lose you, too.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Xiang Hao Ting says. “Not yet, at least.”

* * *

He is thirty-six when he creates his first wormhole. He leaves behind a letter behind full of apologies and promises: _I will see you all in the next life._ He has a packet of M&Ms in his pocket as he steps into another world. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (oh yeah, i forgot to mention - disclaimer: I know nothing about science! so if there are actual physicists in this fandom, I'm sorry)

Once, Xiang Hao Ting visits an observatory in New Mexico. He’s accompanied by a grad student - Irena - who helps him record data and tote around equipment. 

Outside, the desert sky is a beautiful thing. It’s like there’s nothing else in the world but stars, stars, stars, and you could lie there in the sand, staring up at them, waiting for them to crash down on top of you.

For all the surrounding flatness, there are mountains, here, too. In the light, you can see the sparse bushes and the pine trees. You can see jackrabbits darting and lizards scuttling.

But in the darkness, it’s only this--only stars.

Irena looks at the mountains. She says, “My grandmother used to tell me a fairy tale about a glass mountain.” She stops, flushes. “Sorry, I know this is random, Professor Xiang.”

“It’s okay,” Xiang Hao Ting says, with a light laugh. “I don’t know many Western fairy tales, besides the Disney ones. Not my area of study. Go ahead.”

“Well,” Irena says, “there’s supposed to be a castle on the top of the mountain. A beautiful princess sleeping inside. But the only way you could get to the castle was to pick the golden apples nearby.”

Golden apples. Xiang Hao Ting wonders if it’s like the peaches of immortality from the  _ Journey to the West. _

“A lot of people tried to climb the mountain, but they kept falling down and dying. Except there was a schoolboy who was able to do it, because he was clever. He cut off a lynx’s claws and stuck it to his own hands and feet and got up there like Spider-Man up a skyscraper.”

“Lynx-Man,” Xiang Hao Ting suggests.

“Exactly,” she says. “I can’t really remember the details, but the schoolboy reached the top. He got the apple, got the girl, got the castle’s treasures. And everyone who’d tried to climb the mountain all came back to life.”

“A very neat ending. Are there lynxes in New Mexico? We could climb up that mountain over there.”

“I think there are,” Irena says. “And I don’t think we should be cutting off any poor lynx’s claws, Professor, that’s cruel!”

“Of course, of course,” he says, smiling. “Thank you for telling me your grandmother’s story--”

Xiang Hao Ting thinks of this memory, as he walks out on the other side of the wormhole. Golden apples, immortal peaches, magical starfruit -- the myths and legends are always surprisingly healthy, while he carries candy. It’s not like he wanted to stick a carrot in his pocket, anyway.

* * *

He knows that he wasn’t going to get it right the first try. He knows that he wasn’t going to get it right the second try, the third try, the fourth…

There are some universes where reality doesn’t quite exist. Planes of nothingness, without a galaxy borne from the Big Bang and the subsequent tides of evolution. There are some universes incompatible with history that Xiang Hao Ting’s familiar with, civilizations stuck in time, technology that baffles him.

Trial and error. Bending gravity with every wormhole, every Einstein-Rosen bridge.

* * *

He never expected to meet someone like him.

Her name is Dr. Tachibana Maiko, and she finds him in her laboratory. He’d snuck in, scrawled formulas across a whiteboard and consulted textbooks, and she swoops in and says, “You need to create a focus.”

He starts. “What?”

“You’re looking for a universe in particular, aren’t you?” 

“How did you know--?”

“You’re not the only errant traveler I’ve encountered,” she says. “And I was in your shoes, once, when I was younger. What’s your name?”

“Xiang Hao Ting,” he tells her. “Professor of theoretical physics at UCLA--in another universe, I suppose.”

“This is too broad,” she says. “These are the formulas you’ve been working off of? You have to narrow it down to a specific frequency. You’re just blindly hopping the multiverse.” 

“And how do you do that?” Xiang Hao Ting asks.

She tells him.

* * *

Here is one memory--

Eighteen, Yu Xi Gu’s head in his lap, both of them sitting in the grass underneath the shade of a tree. Xiang Hao Ting runs his fingers through Yu Xi Gu’s hair, murmurs, “Xiao Gu - Xiao Gu.”

“What is it?” Yu Xi Gu asks, blinking his eyes open.

“If you’ve always planned to study the stars, does that mean you want to go out into space one day?”

“I want to be a physicist, Hao Ting, not an astronaut,” Yu Xi Gu says. “I think space is interesting, but I’d prefer to study it here on earth. I would be closer to stars in space, but I’m not the type. I’m not tall enough or strong enough to be an astronaut, either.”

“Nonsense. And, what, you don’t want to meet aliens?”

“You watch too many movies,” Yu Xi Gu says, nudging Xiang Hao Ting’s waist with his shoulders.

“Mm, but it’d be cool. I’d miss you, though, if you flew out into space without me.” Xiang Hao Ting mimes a rocket taking off with an ascending whistling noise, lifting his hand upward.

Yu Xi Gu smiles. “I won’t go out into space without you.” 

“What if it was the other way around? If I became an astronaut?”

“Then don’t go without me.”

* * *

“You’ve been remotely harnessing the energy of black holes in the multiverse,” Dr. Tachibana says. “With a specialized device.”

Involuntarily, Xiang Hao Ting pats his coat pocket.

She inclines her head at his response. “Indeed. But you’re not holding the wormholes open with the right cosmic string.”

She reaches down and touches his pinky finger. Dr. Tachibana says, “Did the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke exist in your world? He had three laws. The third being: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Magic can be made possible in the right scientific context and so can  _ legends.” _

“You can’t be serious,” Xiang Hao Ting says, jerking his hand away from Dr. Tachibana’s grasp.

“I am. Most of us travelers seek a specific time, place… person. We want to recover the irrevocable and to change the unchangeable.”

“Were you able to--?”

She shakes her head. “She didn’t want to come with me, in the end. But it’s still there.” She asks, “May I?”

Xiang Hao Ting nods and gives her the mechanism from his pocket. It looks like a simple pocket watch. It’s a morbid choice for his invention -- time is running out, death and gloom and the end approaching -- but it’s appropriate. He knows that there are only so many universes he can walk.

Dr. Tachibana turns over her hand with the pocket watch balanced on her palm. On her little finger, there is a glowing, trailing scarlet band. A red thread. 


End file.
